Reasons I am in pain:
1) One pinata filled with Mad Dog 2020, 1 wiffle ball bat
2) Waking up at 8AM to go to work
3) The 2002 Stanford Band at my house
4) The sun.
5) What I'm looking at outside the window at work.
Much more of this and I will move to the suburbs.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Was my hometown really that bad?
OK, I'm sick of hearing about Columbine too. I'm sick of the pundits and Nancy Grace and the fact that Oprah got headlines for NOT talking about it. But it happened twenty minutes from my childhood home, so it matters to me, and all the pundits all seem to miss the point entirely. I am sick of listening to them. So I want to hear from people who were there and people who went to high schools elsewhere at the same time: Compared to the rest of the world, were the southern Denver suburbs really that bad? (If you want to comment or send me emails I'd love to hear from you)
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I've tried and failed to write about Columbine countless times since it happened, which is odd, because I have no problem writing about Iraq, or Katrina, or pirates -- things I have had very little to do with. It may have something to do with the fact that I used to film lacrosse games and play various forms of sportsball on the Columbine grounds. I sort of knew one of the victims from a kegger. It looks like Dylan and Eric's yearbook photos were taken at the same place mine were. I recognize the main door to the school. I know where the bathroom is in relation to the gunfire. I knew how it smelled outside -- like dry grass (everything around there smells like dry grass) -- and how it would feel to be there -- my skin would have been permanently cracked from the altitude and dry air.
Every time I try to write about Columbine, I fail. I fail because I only vaguely knew one victim, so I feel as if I have no right to say anything in the voice of someone who was affected. I fail because the day it happened -- as I watched it in my freshman dorm room a thousand miles away while my douchebag roommate made fun of the teacher bleeding to death on national television -- I went outside, cried, went to the bathroom to throw up, called all my friends from home, and had the same conversation, over and over and over: "It finally happened." I have no idea why that second word, "finally," was in there. I fail because I don't know why I wasn't surprised.
I fail because I can't write that I wasn't surprised. I can't say that the south part of Denver in the late 90's was one of the most terrible places to go to high school ever. So terrible, in fact, that almost no one my age I talked to about it who fell at all into the realm of "not fitting in" could say they were surprised at all that a couple of misfits killed thirteen people there. I can't say that because, after all, we were all pretty wealthy. Many of us had parents who cared for us. We had sports practice and school books and everything provided for us that was supposed to be provided for us. I also can't say that because it would disrespect the place that was so badly damaged by two people who will go down in history as a couple of the greatest villains in modern history. It does not sound good to say, "Oh, of course it happenedthere. That place was a cesspool." It's just not done.
Instead, I should say it was all Dylan and Eric's fault. If not that, it was Godlessness, or the suffocation that comes with born-again Christianity, or video games, or absentee parents, or runaway liberalness, or Marilyn Manson, or runaway conservatism, or just the death of American values in general.
Those reasons are all a bunch of crap, and everyone knows it. But if they are a bunch of crap, I don't know WHY I knew. Why I was unsurprised. And I hope you all can help me.
High school is a tough time for most people. I'm not sure what made Colorado in that time period different, if it was different at all. I can't place it. I do know that I was scared, all the time. I do know that I did a lot of things I was not proud of. Racist things. Homophobic things. Sexist things. I know we had coaches who didn't believe in women driving. I know that I saw a teacher tell a group of students "I don't really believe that" after the administration had forced the teacher to give a speech condemning an act of vandalism against an out gay student's car. I know that everywhere I go in San Francisco, I run into people who came here to get away from there. Refugees. I know people who grew up in other places that were not harassed for liking things that were not sports. Who were actually popular AND into writing or drama. Who knew out gay people. Who dressed in black and were accepted. Who proudly said the poor should be included in things. Who thought of the Mexicans as people, even friends. But I also know that a lot of places in the late-90's were terrible, and that Columbine -- and South Denver in general -- might not be unique at all.
I don't have an answer for you. I can't place what that feeling is, why I and many of the friends I spoke to were unsurprised. What do you think? Did you grow up there? Were you surprised it happened at Columbine? Did you grow up somewhere else? What was your high school like? Leave ideas in the comment section or send me an email if you're so inclined.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Can we get a few more Vermonts?
Today, the Vermont state legislature overrode the governor's veto to legalize same sex marriage in the state. This is a monumental moment. Never before has a democratically elected body in the United States confirmed the rights of LGBT people to marry who they choose.
In Massachusetts, Iowa, and Connecticut, the courts have determined that marriage is a fundamental right for all people. (California did as well, but that decision was overturned by ballot measure). Now, for the first time, the representatives of the people of a state have passed a law making marriage legal for everyone. And while this might seem like something minor, it is hard to understate how important a shift this is, even if it did occur in a state as small and liberal as Vermont.
If you look historically at rights movements for minority and oppressed populations in the United States, there are generally two phases. In almost all recent cases, courts get the ball rolling. Brown v Board, for example, helped kickstart the Civil Rights movement, but it led to nearly a decade of unprecedented racial tension and violence. Ten years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, a law that cost the Democrats the south but also fundamentally changed this country's attitudes towards race. Today, racism is still pervasive, but it is almost universally frowned upon. Racial violence persisted, but it has gradually faded (though it still unquestionably exists). This, I argue, is largely because the people Americans chose to elect them passed a law granting further rights to African Americans and other racial minorities. It by no means fixed the problem; it did, however, help to fundamentally change the culture.
The women's rights movement, unfortunately, is a not-as-happy counterpoint to the Civil Rights movement. Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, resulted in a huge backlash against the women's rights movement. The Equal Rights Amendment, an amendment to the constitution that would have guaranteed equal rights for women, failed largely because of anti-choice concerns that it would invalidate any restrictions on abortion.
This history is largely glossed over and hugely oversimplified due to the fact that no one will read more than a few paragraphs on a blog, but the point is this: court decisions do not necessarily mean that a minority group will gain any more stature in the long run. The civil rights movement was largely successful: legal segregation was ended, outright racial violence such as lynchings were minimized, and the culture was fundamentally changed, though a subtler and some would say more dangerous form of racism still exists. Women, on the other hand, continue to be beaten, raped, murdered, paid less, and kept out of positions of power. This can't all be blamed on any one thing, but the fact remains that the American people failed to ever stand up and have their legislature do much of anything to protect the rights of women. They did so for racial minorities, particularly African Americans. This is a huge difference.
Today, over 50% of violent hate crimes are committed against LGBT people. Court decisions that stand up for the right to marry are welcome, but I fear they will do nothing to change the views of the people. Without that change, real change on the marriage issue -- and real change on hate crimes legislation -- will never happen. We need more Vermonts, desperately. We need to pass ballot measures that support the right of all people to marry, not vice versa. We need municipalities and elected officials of all types to do the right thing here. And that, unfortunately, means the people need to do the work. Yes, that means you need to do the work.
In Massachusetts, Iowa, and Connecticut, the courts have determined that marriage is a fundamental right for all people. (California did as well, but that decision was overturned by ballot measure). Now, for the first time, the representatives of the people of a state have passed a law making marriage legal for everyone. And while this might seem like something minor, it is hard to understate how important a shift this is, even if it did occur in a state as small and liberal as Vermont.
If you look historically at rights movements for minority and oppressed populations in the United States, there are generally two phases. In almost all recent cases, courts get the ball rolling. Brown v Board, for example, helped kickstart the Civil Rights movement, but it led to nearly a decade of unprecedented racial tension and violence. Ten years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, a law that cost the Democrats the south but also fundamentally changed this country's attitudes towards race. Today, racism is still pervasive, but it is almost universally frowned upon. Racial violence persisted, but it has gradually faded (though it still unquestionably exists). This, I argue, is largely because the people Americans chose to elect them passed a law granting further rights to African Americans and other racial minorities. It by no means fixed the problem; it did, however, help to fundamentally change the culture.
The women's rights movement, unfortunately, is a not-as-happy counterpoint to the Civil Rights movement. Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, resulted in a huge backlash against the women's rights movement. The Equal Rights Amendment, an amendment to the constitution that would have guaranteed equal rights for women, failed largely because of anti-choice concerns that it would invalidate any restrictions on abortion.
This history is largely glossed over and hugely oversimplified due to the fact that no one will read more than a few paragraphs on a blog, but the point is this: court decisions do not necessarily mean that a minority group will gain any more stature in the long run. The civil rights movement was largely successful: legal segregation was ended, outright racial violence such as lynchings were minimized, and the culture was fundamentally changed, though a subtler and some would say more dangerous form of racism still exists. Women, on the other hand, continue to be beaten, raped, murdered, paid less, and kept out of positions of power. This can't all be blamed on any one thing, but the fact remains that the American people failed to ever stand up and have their legislature do much of anything to protect the rights of women. They did so for racial minorities, particularly African Americans. This is a huge difference.
Today, over 50% of violent hate crimes are committed against LGBT people. Court decisions that stand up for the right to marry are welcome, but I fear they will do nothing to change the views of the people. Without that change, real change on the marriage issue -- and real change on hate crimes legislation -- will never happen. We need more Vermonts, desperately. We need to pass ballot measures that support the right of all people to marry, not vice versa. We need municipalities and elected officials of all types to do the right thing here. And that, unfortunately, means the people need to do the work. Yes, that means you need to do the work.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A nonfiction manifesto
An excerpt of an email from the great poet Andrew Aulino:
Yes I was once browsing in Skylight Books in Los Feliz (next neighborhood to the West of me) and found myself stuck at a reading of some CNF, read in the "poet voice," and felt, both because of the subject matter and its dull insightlessness (wish this were German "sowohl ihre Themen als auch ihre Einsichtlosigkeit wie ihre (deswegen) unverdiente Gefuehlsanspreuche) and the emotional demands it made on the reader, though it hadn't earned them. And while she had subtler manipulations I won't get into, she seemed to assume, indeed demand that we feel deeply moved for the simple fact that she was discussing some certain subject, that she had a role in it, that it must be interesting, despite the fact that, Jesus Christ, I felt about to turn into some tusked, cloven-hooved beast, whirling and driven by some bibliophobic hormonal response into destroying the store and every copy of the book she was selling; indeed I felt that this transformation was taking place, for my knees began to get weak and my vision went from double to fully blurred, but it was merely my going into a coma of boredom, and my girlfriend at the time had to drag me out of the store, looping her arms under my underarms,, and slapping my face in the cold (it was winter) night air, and it took some good strong coffee, a big bottle of mineral water and the reading of some H.D. to fully restore me to my former state of (relative) wellness...
My thoughts below the fold.
-----
For those of you who haven't spent a good part of your lives trying to figure out what "creative nonfiction" means, I'll give defining it a shot: creative nonfiction is an attempt to turn actual events into literary art. Implicit in this is an invisible contract with the reader stating that all efforts have been made to ensure that what is written is "real." Many will disagree with this. That's fine. I tried.
No form of art has been more heavily criticized since the Maplethorpe/Jesse Helms fiasco. People like James Frey, author of A Million Thousand Gazillion Tiny Little Pieces Inside Pieces of a Tiny Million Slices of Pieces or something like that, have been held up as exemplars of something terrible, something so insidious that they must be turned into characters who make Dick Cheney look like Rudy Huxtable. The man lied to Oprah, for Christ's sake. An American cannot commit a more heinous crime.
Out of all this came an unwritten rule that all CNF writers have been asked to follow: Your narrator, no matter what, must be reliable. An unreliable person, a real person like Humbert Humbert, has no place writing nonfiction. They can't be trusted, after all.
This makes sense if you're Truman Capote or Stephen Jay Gould, writing analytic, journalistic or historical creative non-fiction. But so much CNF is personal; it, unfortunately, deals in the totally and completely unreliable realm of memory. It's like buying pot off a dealer you don't know. You might end up with the best high of your life, but you also might end up naked in the back of a police car barking at the moon and propositioning the cop.
For the sake of argument, I would venture to say that anyone writing memoir or personal essays with a reliable narrator is being more dishonest than someone who writes with a reliable one. If you have something interesting to write about from your personal life, you are no doubt a complete and utter mess. I know maybe three CNF writers I would trust, and they all write analytic stuff. That doesn't mean I don't like the other three dozen I know. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear their stories. Memoir and personal essay writers who should be using unreliable narrators but pretend to be reliable end up causing pain just like poor Andrew suffered. Like Oprah suffered. Like every fan of the memoir form has suffered. It hurts the soul.
So to all of those CNF writers out there, give the unreliable narrator a try. Be honest about it. Let the reader know they shouldn't believe everything you say by being obviously unreliable because, let's face it, you are obviously unreliable. Pretending not to be is the lie! Editors, you should love this! It gives you the cover you need. Start accepting CNF books with unreliable narrators. Please, for the love of God. Something's gotta change or Andrew's burning down some bookstores.
Yes I was once browsing in Skylight Books in Los Feliz (next neighborhood to the West of me) and found myself stuck at a reading of some CNF, read in the "poet voice," and felt, both because of the subject matter and its dull insightlessness (wish this were German "sowohl ihre Themen als auch ihre Einsichtlosigkeit wie ihre (deswegen) unverdiente Gefuehlsanspreuche) and the emotional demands it made on the reader, though it hadn't earned them. And while she had subtler manipulations I won't get into, she seemed to assume, indeed demand that we feel deeply moved for the simple fact that she was discussing some certain subject, that she had a role in it, that it must be interesting, despite the fact that, Jesus Christ, I felt about to turn into some tusked, cloven-hooved beast, whirling and driven by some bibliophobic hormonal response into destroying the store and every copy of the book she was selling; indeed I felt that this transformation was taking place, for my knees began to get weak and my vision went from double to fully blurred, but it was merely my going into a coma of boredom, and my girlfriend at the time had to drag me out of the store, looping her arms under my underarms,, and slapping my face in the cold (it was winter) night air, and it took some good strong coffee, a big bottle of mineral water and the reading of some H.D. to fully restore me to my former state of (relative) wellness...
-----
For those of you who haven't spent a good part of your lives trying to figure out what "creative nonfiction" means, I'll give defining it a shot: creative nonfiction is an attempt to turn actual events into literary art. Implicit in this is an invisible contract with the reader stating that all efforts have been made to ensure that what is written is "real." Many will disagree with this. That's fine. I tried.
No form of art has been more heavily criticized since the Maplethorpe/Jesse Helms fiasco. People like James Frey, author of A Million Thousand Gazillion Tiny Little Pieces Inside Pieces of a Tiny Million Slices of Pieces or something like that, have been held up as exemplars of something terrible, something so insidious that they must be turned into characters who make Dick Cheney look like Rudy Huxtable. The man lied to Oprah, for Christ's sake. An American cannot commit a more heinous crime.
Out of all this came an unwritten rule that all CNF writers have been asked to follow: Your narrator, no matter what, must be reliable. An unreliable person, a real person like Humbert Humbert, has no place writing nonfiction. They can't be trusted, after all.
This makes sense if you're Truman Capote or Stephen Jay Gould, writing analytic, journalistic or historical creative non-fiction. But so much CNF is personal; it, unfortunately, deals in the totally and completely unreliable realm of memory. It's like buying pot off a dealer you don't know. You might end up with the best high of your life, but you also might end up naked in the back of a police car barking at the moon and propositioning the cop.
For the sake of argument, I would venture to say that anyone writing memoir or personal essays with a reliable narrator is being more dishonest than someone who writes with a reliable one. If you have something interesting to write about from your personal life, you are no doubt a complete and utter mess. I know maybe three CNF writers I would trust, and they all write analytic stuff. That doesn't mean I don't like the other three dozen I know. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear their stories. Memoir and personal essay writers who should be using unreliable narrators but pretend to be reliable end up causing pain just like poor Andrew suffered. Like Oprah suffered. Like every fan of the memoir form has suffered. It hurts the soul.
So to all of those CNF writers out there, give the unreliable narrator a try. Be honest about it. Let the reader know they shouldn't believe everything you say by being obviously unreliable because, let's face it, you are obviously unreliable. Pretending not to be is the lie! Editors, you should love this! It gives you the cover you need. Start accepting CNF books with unreliable narrators. Please, for the love of God. Something's gotta change or Andrew's burning down some bookstores.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
If I had to choose a time in history to be writing, it would be now. This is not a good thing.
I've been out of town for awhile. The city was getting to me. At the bus stop the other day, this Latina woman walked up to me, spit on some poor Mexican guy, and said, "Mexicans. Dirty filthy Mexicans. Disgusting." Then she said to me, "Sir, aren't they filthy?" or something like that, all in a very thick accent, and I said, "No thank you" and got on the bus. Before I could find a place in the bus to stand, the bus driver yelled at some Asian guy, telling him to go back to his own country, and then, once I was lucky enough to get a seat, this self-described "OG," who must have been in his sixties, was giving this 17 year old kid advice on how to make money dealing drugs and robbing people without going to jail. I don't think the advice was very good. I decided to run away for a few days to stay with my friend Corey up in Ukiah. It was amazing.
The first night, we went to this playground by his house and climbed up and slid down these slides that must have been somewhere between one and two stories tall. I cracked my knee pretty good, and I used muscles that have been neglected for a decade, but in all, I haven't had so much fun in a very long time. After the slides, we went to the swings, and I saw this humongous "spaceship" that was actually a climbing contraption for kids. At night, the thing looked magical, like it was out of some bad 60's movie. The insides were made of unpainted stainless steal, and it's red shell had chipped paint. It was made of bars for kids to climb on, bars that were the same width and distance from each other that you'd find in a jail cell. It was twice as tall as me. I yelled "spaceship!" and ran to it, but then I saw this fence around it, and Corey said, "No, we don't like that spaceship." And I looked at him, and he said, "A kid died there."
I'm frustrated, but I'm also happy. I'm happy to be writing. I wrote a lot this weekend. I wrote a lot of fiction, but in between the fiction, I wrote quite a few polemical rants, rants that don't really have any value and would never be publishable but that I want to share somewhere. So here is one of them, with all its levity and humor, for all twelve of you to read, below the ghetto fold made up of six dashes.
------
I will start by reiterating what has been said by people smarter than me: Our species has one hell of a genetic mutation.Our large foreheads ... our large brains ... allow us to do amazing things. We can remember. We can manipulate our surroundings. We can learn how to solve unbelievably complex problems, at least compared to most other species on earth. And this mutation has made us incredibly successful. Our population has exploded. We went to the moon. We built entirely new surroundings that were more suitable to our needs as a species. But these things will most likely also kill us all because we never understand entirely what we're doing until after it's done, and it has a habit of making our lives unpleasant in the meantime (think cancer and global warming and war). What's worse: this adaptation allows us to be aware of the fact that we're killing ourselves, but we are way too inflexible to do anything about it, so we're all gonna die. The end.
No, not the end. What makes life interesting is watching all the irony in this. It gives me the same sort of sick pleasure I get out of watching Law and Order or CSI. It's totally predictable and there's nothing I can do to change the outcome, no matter how much I want to.
Jesus Christ. I sound like Easy Rawlins or Sam Spade. But it's hard not to. Here are the facts:
We (and I will not say our government because we are all responsible) tortured people, many of them innocent, with beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse and abject humiliation. STOP! Don't roll your eyes and say, "Here we go again. More depressing news." Put yourself in their situation. Imagine yourself tied to the rafters for days in a standing position, being kept awake, beaten and fondled, all while you knew that the same type of people who were beating you were bombing your family with depleted uranium, poisoning their drinking water, giving your children and grandchildren horrible disfigurements, and mocking everything you believed in.
Amid all that, we were (and are still) in the midst of a festival of greed, buying things to distract ourselves made from what amounts to slave labor. STOP! It just doesn't seem real, does it? You never see these people. You can go see for yourself, I hear. There are people working in sweatshops under the ground in Chinatown here in San Francisco. If you hang out long enough, you can see them with your own eyes. Every once in a while, an elevator will come up out of the sidewalk. For a split second, you can see the people below, sewing for more than 12 hours a day.
We continue to boil ourselves to death with carbon dioxide. STOP! If you live near an ocean, there's a high likelihood your home won't be there in fifty years. You know? That place you sleep at night, and keep your belongings, and make love. If you don't live near an ocean, guess who's coming to visit?
People keep telling me that writing is a dying profession. If I had to choose a single time in history to write, it would be now.
The first night, we went to this playground by his house and climbed up and slid down these slides that must have been somewhere between one and two stories tall. I cracked my knee pretty good, and I used muscles that have been neglected for a decade, but in all, I haven't had so much fun in a very long time. After the slides, we went to the swings, and I saw this humongous "spaceship" that was actually a climbing contraption for kids. At night, the thing looked magical, like it was out of some bad 60's movie. The insides were made of unpainted stainless steal, and it's red shell had chipped paint. It was made of bars for kids to climb on, bars that were the same width and distance from each other that you'd find in a jail cell. It was twice as tall as me. I yelled "spaceship!" and ran to it, but then I saw this fence around it, and Corey said, "No, we don't like that spaceship." And I looked at him, and he said, "A kid died there."
I'm frustrated, but I'm also happy. I'm happy to be writing. I wrote a lot this weekend. I wrote a lot of fiction, but in between the fiction, I wrote quite a few polemical rants, rants that don't really have any value and would never be publishable but that I want to share somewhere. So here is one of them, with all its levity and humor, for all twelve of you to read, below the ghetto fold made up of six dashes.
------
I will start by reiterating what has been said by people smarter than me: Our species has one hell of a genetic mutation.Our large foreheads ... our large brains ... allow us to do amazing things. We can remember. We can manipulate our surroundings. We can learn how to solve unbelievably complex problems, at least compared to most other species on earth. And this mutation has made us incredibly successful. Our population has exploded. We went to the moon. We built entirely new surroundings that were more suitable to our needs as a species. But these things will most likely also kill us all because we never understand entirely what we're doing until after it's done, and it has a habit of making our lives unpleasant in the meantime (think cancer and global warming and war). What's worse: this adaptation allows us to be aware of the fact that we're killing ourselves, but we are way too inflexible to do anything about it, so we're all gonna die. The end.
No, not the end. What makes life interesting is watching all the irony in this. It gives me the same sort of sick pleasure I get out of watching Law and Order or CSI. It's totally predictable and there's nothing I can do to change the outcome, no matter how much I want to.
Jesus Christ. I sound like Easy Rawlins or Sam Spade. But it's hard not to. Here are the facts:
We (and I will not say our government because we are all responsible) tortured people, many of them innocent, with beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse and abject humiliation. STOP! Don't roll your eyes and say, "Here we go again. More depressing news." Put yourself in their situation. Imagine yourself tied to the rafters for days in a standing position, being kept awake, beaten and fondled, all while you knew that the same type of people who were beating you were bombing your family with depleted uranium, poisoning their drinking water, giving your children and grandchildren horrible disfigurements, and mocking everything you believed in.
Amid all that, we were (and are still) in the midst of a festival of greed, buying things to distract ourselves made from what amounts to slave labor. STOP! It just doesn't seem real, does it? You never see these people. You can go see for yourself, I hear. There are people working in sweatshops under the ground in Chinatown here in San Francisco. If you hang out long enough, you can see them with your own eyes. Every once in a while, an elevator will come up out of the sidewalk. For a split second, you can see the people below, sewing for more than 12 hours a day.
We continue to boil ourselves to death with carbon dioxide. STOP! If you live near an ocean, there's a high likelihood your home won't be there in fifty years. You know? That place you sleep at night, and keep your belongings, and make love. If you don't live near an ocean, guess who's coming to visit?
People keep telling me that writing is a dying profession. If I had to choose a single time in history to write, it would be now.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
News and narrative
I know I'm not the first person to ever make the point that newspapers tell stories with their headlines. Usually, people take a look at individual stories to make this point. Today, to save you time, I'm going to summarize the story that the whole front page (or main page) is telling, in summary form, so that you don't have to read them. I am doing this because I am bored.
BBC News: We are fucked. Fucked I tell you! Baghdad is still a catastrophe and the oceans are coming. Fast. The market's doing better, though, but that's kind of like saying the Polar bears had a good day. They're still gonna die.
Drudge: Stocks are a little better, on paper, but we are fucked. This is all Obama's fault. He is failing. His message sucks. Pelosi is evil. We are all going to die because Obama doesn't care about terrorists. The end of the free market means the end of freedom. Even chimps are attacking us. Be afraid.
Huffington Post: The Republicans are self-destructing, which is a good thing because they're so evil they tried to kill our own soldiers. The wars are not going particularly well, and Obama's economic team is in some rough waters, but don't worry! Look at the funny pundits! They are so cute and silly and angry! Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart and Ann Coulter and Bill Maher! Haha! They don't like each other! It's like WWF, only they're out of shape, and with the exception of Jon Stewart, slightly stupider than any professional wrestler.
Politico: The Democrats are scary good at everything they do right now. They're like some Orwellian superpower, masterful at manipulating public belief. The Republicans are overwhelmed but tirelessly trying to fight the mystical Democratic power.
The New York Times: Hey! Except for all the death in other countries, it's actually a pretty good day! Obama wants good things done, he might actually get them done, the DOW is going UP today, and China has all kinds of bad news, which is good news for us! Drink up!
Talking Points Memo: Republicans are dumb. They don't know what they're doing. Look at them. Stupids. And if you thought Republican politicians were dumb, look at the Republican pundits. We used to be the best investigative reporting team around, during the Bush Administration, but now that Obama's in power, we're going to spend all our time kicking Republicans while they're down. Because God knows no Obama officials will ever do anything wrong, especially because Democrats have almost all the power (no Supreme Court and no 60 Senators), and we all know people with that much power would never need any investigation.
That is all.
Nerdily yours,
Seth
BBC News: We are fucked. Fucked I tell you! Baghdad is still a catastrophe and the oceans are coming. Fast. The market's doing better, though, but that's kind of like saying the Polar bears had a good day. They're still gonna die.
Drudge: Stocks are a little better, on paper, but we are fucked. This is all Obama's fault. He is failing. His message sucks. Pelosi is evil. We are all going to die because Obama doesn't care about terrorists. The end of the free market means the end of freedom. Even chimps are attacking us. Be afraid.
Huffington Post: The Republicans are self-destructing, which is a good thing because they're so evil they tried to kill our own soldiers. The wars are not going particularly well, and Obama's economic team is in some rough waters, but don't worry! Look at the funny pundits! They are so cute and silly and angry! Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart and Ann Coulter and Bill Maher! Haha! They don't like each other! It's like WWF, only they're out of shape, and with the exception of Jon Stewart, slightly stupider than any professional wrestler.
Politico: The Democrats are scary good at everything they do right now. They're like some Orwellian superpower, masterful at manipulating public belief. The Republicans are overwhelmed but tirelessly trying to fight the mystical Democratic power.
The New York Times: Hey! Except for all the death in other countries, it's actually a pretty good day! Obama wants good things done, he might actually get them done, the DOW is going UP today, and China has all kinds of bad news, which is good news for us! Drink up!
Talking Points Memo: Republicans are dumb. They don't know what they're doing. Look at them. Stupids. And if you thought Republican politicians were dumb, look at the Republican pundits. We used to be the best investigative reporting team around, during the Bush Administration, but now that Obama's in power, we're going to spend all our time kicking Republicans while they're down. Because God knows no Obama officials will ever do anything wrong, especially because Democrats have almost all the power (no Supreme Court and no 60 Senators), and we all know people with that much power would never need any investigation.
That is all.
Nerdily yours,
Seth
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